Salman Abu Sitta

Salman Abu Sitta after giving a lecture at the University of Nottingham about the Palestinian refugees cause.
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1940 Map with the village Al-Ma'in Abu Sitta, his birthplace, just eight kilometers from the Mediterranean Sea.

Salman Abu Sitta (Arabic: سلمان ابو ستة; born 1937 in the village Al Ma’in Abu Sitta) is a Palestinian researcher. Abu Sitta, who was expelled from Palestine as a child in 1948, during the Nakba, or 'Catastrophe', as the Palestinians call the disaster which befell them upon the foundation of the State of Israel in 1948. He has dedicated his life to the Palestinian cause and is engaged in public debates with Israeli peace activists. Abu Sitta is the founder and President of Palestine Land Society in London, dedicated to the documentation of Palestine’s land and People.

He is a foremost scholar on mapping Palestinian villages before the Nakba and developing a practical plan for implementing the right of return of Palestinian refugees.[1][2]

Early life

Salman Abu Sitta was born in 1937 into a Palestinian family. His family's land and the village bore their name, Ma'in Abu Sitta (the Abu Sitta springwell), in Beer Sheba District of Mandatory Palestine. The father of Salman Abu Sita, and his cousin dug a well in Khirbat, until they reached a layer rich in water. In 1920, his father also installed a pump and he established the school in the village. Around the village in the spring, there were fields of wheat from horizon to horizon, vineyards and orchards of almonds, dates, and olives.[3] In 1948, at age 10, he became a refugee in the Gaza Strip and later attended and graduated from al-Saidiya secondary school in Cairo, Egypt, ranking first in Egypt.

At Cairo University's Faculty of Engineering, as part of the remarkable act of altruism by the government of Gamal Abdel Nasser by which university education was made freely available to Palestinian refugees[4], he graduated from the Faculty of Engineering in 1958. Abu Sitta went to the United Kingdom to continue his post-graduate studies, obtaining his doctorate in Civil Engineering from the University of London, UCL.[5]

It was his engineering background that first helped him in his hunt for maps and documents on Palestine.

Career

Abu Sitta establish a engineering firm in Kuwait that has worked for the World Bank, the Arab Fund for Arts and Culture, the Kuwait Fund for Arab Economic Development and other organisations in the Middle East and Africa. He was a member of the Palestine National Council (the Palestinian parliament in exile) and is as of 2023 a member of the Geneva-based Palestinian Welfare Association.[6]

He studied refugee affairs and authored over 400 papers on the subject. He directed international development and construction projects. He was the founder and President of the Palestine Land Society (PLS).[7] He was the General Coordinator of the Right of Return Congress.

Abu Sitta engaged in debates with Israelis who professed interest in peace without the return of the refugees, including Uri Avnery and Rabbi Michael Lerner.[8]

Palestinian expulsion (al Nakba)

Abu Sitta spent 40 years digging for information related to Palestine before, during and after the Nakba, the destruction of Palestine. Abu Sitta's work ensured that "the memories and identity of the occupied homeland are never lost". He is regarded by Uri Avnery as perhaps 'the world's foremost expert on the Nakba'.[9] The documentation process began when he was 30 years old, when he stumbled on the memoirs of the Turkish chief of Beersheba,[10] when Palestine was under Ottoman rule. The document dated to the early twentieth century.

"It sort of started from there, and it has never stopped," Abu Sitta says. "I kept collecting all and any material on every inch of my homeland."

Abu Sitta's claimed to show that the return of the refugees to their homes is sacred to Palestinians, legal under international law and possible without major dislocation to the Jewish settlers in Palestine.[11] His work also includes the compendium Atlas of Palestine 1917-1966.[12]

In 1998 he published the book The Palestinian Nakba 1948: The register of depopulated localities in Palestine, in which he documented all the villages destroyed by the State of Israel during the 1948 Palestine war. In 2010 he published a 650-page atlas called Atlas of Palestine, 1917-1966, based on the study of maps, photographs, administrative records and memos from different periods, before, during and after the British Mandate of Palestine, its a detailed account of what has happened to individual villages and settlements during the British Mandate and the subsequent decades, produced by the Palestine Land Society.

In 2016, he published his autobiography, Mapping My Return: a Palestinian Memoir, which was published by the American University in Cairo Presso Press. The book was the lead book review in Volume 16 No 2 of the Journal of Holy Land and Palestine Studies, published by Edinburgh University Press. Rosemary Sayigh of the American University of Beirut, commented that the majority of personal accounts of the Nakba focus on Galilee or central Palestine; part of the value of Abu Sitta’s testimony is therefore that it focuses on the story in the south, and the different dynamic there.[5]

The Zochrot association in Israel was helped by his research for the purpose of commemorating of the destroyed Palestinian villages.

Bibliography

  • The Return Journey. (2007) Palestine Land Society ISBN 0-9549034-1-2
  • Mapping My Return: A Palestinian Memoir. American University in Cairo Press Series G - Reference, Information and Interdisciplinary Subjects Series. (2016) American University in Cairo Press, 2016 / Oxford University Press, 2016 ISBN 978-977-416-730-0[13]
  • Atlas of Palestine, 1917-1966. Palestine Land Society (December 2010) ISBN 978-0-9549034-2-8[14]
  • The Palestinian Nakba 1948: The register of depopulated localities in Palestine (Occasional Return Centre studies) (1998 reprinted 2000) Palestinian Return Centre ISBN 1-901924-10-6

Articles

  • Peace Palestine - Traces of Poison: Israel's Dark History Revealed, December 4, 2007 (about the biological war)
  • Geography of Occupation
  • Palestine Remembered Palestine Right Of Return, Sacred, Legal, and Possible
  • Jerusalemite 7 June 2007 "Atlas of Palestine 1948: Reconstructing Palestine"

Videos

References

  1. ^ Irfan, Anne (20 January 2017). "Mapping my return: a Palestinian memoir" (PDF). British Journal of Middle Eastern Studies. 44 (2): 283–284. doi:10.1080/13530194.2016.1272216. S2CID 151533597.
  2. ^ Abu Sitta, Salman (14–16 July 2006). "Back to Roots". Al-Awda. Retrieved 23 February 2014. Address to 4th International Convention, San Francisco.
  3. ^ Mapping My Return: A Palestinian Memoir. American University in Cairo Press. (2016)
  4. ^ "Professor Hugh Goddard introduction to Dr. Salman Abu Sitta speech". Palestine Land Society. Retrieved 18 April 2024.
  5. ^ a b "Professor Hugh Goddard introduction to Dr. Salman Abu Sitta speech". Palestine Land Society. Retrieved 18 April 2024.
  6. ^ "Documenting the catastrophe". Al-Ahram. 21 May 2023. Retrieved 18 April 2024.
  7. ^ Palestine Land Society
  8. ^ 'Debate Between Salman Abu Sitta and Michael Lerner of Tikkun on The Right of Return,' CounterPunch 12 February 2003.
  9. ^ Uri Avnery, 'The Moral Right of the Refugees to Return,' Counterpunch 16–18 May 2014.
  10. ^ Amira Howeidy , 'Salman Abu Sitta: Right of Return, A Palestine perspective on life,' Archived 11 July 2008 at the Wayback Machine Al Ahram 13–19 May 2004 Issue No. 690.
  11. ^ Salman Abu Sitta: The Right of Return: Sacred, Legal and Possible, in Naseer Aruri (ed.): Palestinian Refugees - The Right of Return. London: Pluto Press, 2001, pp. 195–207. (https://doi.org/10.2307/j.ctt18fs9x9.16)
  12. ^ Abu-Sitta, Salman H. (2010), Atlas of Palestine, 1917-1966, Palestine Land Society, London: Palestine Land Society, ISBN 978-0-9549034-2-8, OCLC 693947063, retrieved 31 March 2022
  13. ^ Abu-Sitta, Salman H. (16 April 2024). Mapping My Return: A Palestinian Memoir. Oxford University Press. ISBN 978-977-416-730-0.
  14. ^ Archived 18 December 2019 at the Wayback Machine

External links

  • Uri Davis: In Search of the Abu Sitta Sword
  • Palestine Land Society
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